Brian WestoverAsus ROG G501J-DS71The Asus ROG G501J-DS71 is the latest midrange gaming laptop in the company's Republic of Gamers line. It's the first model to sport a new thin and light design, but has some rough spots that need work.

Mediocre performance. Graphics card can't properly support gaming on the 4K display. Storage is on the stingy side. Bloatware.

Bottom Line

The Asus ROG G501J-DS71 is the latest midrange gaming laptop in the company's Republic of Gamers line. It's the first model to sport a new thin and light design, but has some rough spots that need work.

Asus has had a solid foothold with gamers for years, thanks to its Republic of Gamers line of gaming laptops, desktops, and components. With the Asus ROG G501J-DS71 ($1,699 as tested), it extends its gaming laptop line to the thin and light designs that have become so popular in the last two years. It's a big shift for Asus, which previously stuck to the basic template of high-powered mobile gaming machines in thick-bodied designs. Unfortunately, when comparing systems like the ultraportable Razer Blade and the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro G-1438, our Editors' Choice midrange gaming laptop, the the Asus ROG G501J-DS71 shows some flaws. Middling gaming performance and poorly matched graphics hardware and display panel are the major problems. It's not a complete dud, but the ROG G501J-DS71 could stand some improvements.

The slim G501J-DS71 is a stark departure from the design of past Republic of Gamers laptops. The brushed-aluminum construction has more in common with the latest Razer Blade than the Stealth-bomber-inspired Asus ROG G751JY-DH72X. It's much thinner, measuring just 0.83 by 15.1 by 10 inches (HWD), and lighter, too, at just 5 pounds. The new design is not only sleek and thin, it also has a slightly different aesthetic, with a black finish and red highlights, from the crimson lettering on the keyboard to a thin border of red around the outside bezel of the display and another around the surface of the touchpad.

The Ultra-High-Definition (3,860-by-2,160) 15.6-inch display is impressive. But 4K isn't necessarily the best pick for a gaming laptop, since you're limited to a mobile graphics card that can't produce playable frame rates at that resolution. It's enough that the latest Alienware 15, an entry-level gaming laptop, opts for a full HD display instead of a higher resolution, since it offers the better gaming experience. Until mobile graphics hardware catches up with the new demands of 4K gaming, we recommend full HD displays, and no greater than 3K for those who insist on a better-than-Full-HD resolution.

The laptop has two built-in stereo speakers, featuring Bang and Olufsen ICEpower and Asus's own ROG AudioWizard. Sound quality is very good, but the real treat is the ROG sound utility, which combines a precision equalizer with game-specific programmable presets, so you can select the EQ profile that works best for each type of game: War Room (for role-playing and strategy games), Soundscape (for sports, racing, and simulator games), Battlefield (for first-person shooters), Action (for action and adventure games), and Multimedia for non-gaming content.

The keyboard is backlit, but don't expect the rainbow of custom colors you'll get on the Alienware 15 or the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K. Instead, the lettering glows red, with extra red accents glowing on the WASD keys. The touchpad is clickable across the entire surface, with the right and left buttons integrated into the touch surface. But while the touchpad isn't bad, Asus knows it's not what you'll want to use for gaming, so a wired USB gaming mouse is included with the laptop.

FeaturesPort selection isn't bad. On the right, you'll find two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and a headset jack. On the left is another USB 3.0 port (this one with Asus's USB Charger Plus for charging devices while in Sleep mode), and HDMI output.

You'll also find what looks like a mini DisplayPort, but is actually a Thunderbolt port. What does this mean? Well, Thunderbolt offers some speedy data-transfer capabilities that a mini DisplayPort does not, along with serving as an output for connecting an external display. Whether or not that's a selling point is up in the air—there are still so few Thunderbolt-equipped products on the market, and the user base is still so niche, that this capability won't do anything for the majority of shoppers.

Asus also expands the system's port selection with two included adapter dongles: a USB-to-RJ45 adapter and a mini-DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter for connecting projectors and older monitors. The laptop features 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 for wireless connectivity.

For storage, there's a 512GB solid-state drive (SSD), which should offer speedy performance, but doesn't have the same 1TB+ capacity seen on the Acer Aspire V 15 Nitro (VN7-591G-76JG) and the HP Omen 15. On top of that, Asus includes plenty of preinstalled software, like a 30-day trial of McAfee LiveSafe Security, a free 30-day trial for new customers of Microsoft Office 365, and apps like iHeart Radio, Netflix, TripAdvisor, Zinio reader, and a handful of samples from WildTangent Games. Given that most gaming systems are relatively bloatware-free—even when coming from mainstream manufacturers notorious for adding shovelware—it's something of a disappointment to see so many preinstalled apps on an Asus gaming machine. Asus covers the ROG G501J-DS71 with a standard one-year warranty.

Performance The Asus ROG G501J-DS71 is outfitted with the same Intel Core i7-4720HQ processor we saw in the latest Razer Blade. That CPU, paired with 16GB of RAM, gives the G501J-DS71 decent performance, but it still lags slightly behind the competition. In PCMark 8 Work Conventional, the laptop scored 2,812 points, while competing systems hovered at or above the 3,000-point mark. Cinebench performance, at 658 points, put it ahead of most, but behind both the Razer Blade (675 points) and the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro G-1438 (720 points). In Photoshop, it actually tied the HP Omen 15, with both finishing the test in 3 minutes 24 seconds, but it was still notably slower than the MSI GT72 Dominator Pro G-1438 (3:02). For productive use outside of gaming, the laptop should be more than adequate, even for more demanding uses, like photo and video editing.

With its Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M, the system's graphics performance was again a half-step behind the rest of the pack. In 3DMark Cloud Gate (our medium-setting test) the G501J-DS71 scored 14,619 points, beating only the entry-level Alienware 15 (12,382 points). Scoring 1,948 points in the more demanding Fire Strike Extreme, it fell to the back again, only ahead of the HP Omen 15 (1,840 points). The gaming performance is also lackluster when compared with competitors that boast the more powerful Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M GPU, which offers frame rates of nearly twice what the Asus ROG G501J-DS71 produced. Combine this with the discrepancy between the 4K display and a graphics card that can't produce playable frame rates at 4K resolution, and the Asus ROG G501J-DS71 isn't the best alternative for gaming performance.

That said, the G501J-DS71 does offer some pretty great battery efficiency, lasting 5 hours 44 minutes in our rundown test. It's the one area where the laptop clearly pulled ahead of the competition, as most competitors failed to clear the 5-hour mark.

Conclusion As gaming laptops go, the ROG G501J-DS71 is a big departure from Asus's usual high-octane gaming rigs, slimming down and becoming more portable. Unfortunately, it also sacrifices a lot of the gaming performance that has marked past systems in the Republic of Gamers line. While this is probably just a bump in the road as Asus gets a handle on the ins and outs of making an ultraportable gaming laptop, this is clearly a first-iteration product. I could see things improving significantly if Asus were to release a Full HD version, but for the time being, there are a lot of rough edges that Asus needs to polish. For our top pick in the midrange category, there's always the Editors' Choice MSI GT72 Dominator Pro G-1438, while the Razer Blade is our Editors' Choice for ultraportable gaming, thanks to superb performance and solid battery life.

Asus ROG G501J-DS71

Bottom Line: The Asus ROG G501J-DS71 is the latest midrange gaming laptop in the company's Republic of Gamers line. It's the first model to sport a new thin and light design, but has some rough spots that need work.

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About the Author

Brian Westover is an Analyst for the Hardware Team, reviewing laptops, desktops, and storage devices.
As a child, Brian was frequently asked "What do you want to be when you grow up?" His answer alternated between Superman and Batman. This was cute when he was five, but worrisome at seventeen. Naturally, he is now a journalist, writing about tec... See Full Bio

Asus ROG G501J-DS71

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